Hinksman crossed quickly to the window and peeked out. The street was quiet. No police activity. The TV interview had made him jumpy — but there was no way they could know about him, he reasoned. Then he remembered the two detectives in the Posthouse Hotel. Particularly the American.
He delved into the carrier bag and pulled out the video tapes he’d removed from Gaskell’s house, once the arms dealer was dead. He placed them carefully on the floor. Then took out the gun, lay back on he bed with it held across his chest and closed his eyes.
Henry Christie flicked off the TV. ‘Bitch!’
‘ Oh Dad, I was watching that,’ complained Jenny, his eldest laughter. ‘Emmerdale is on soon.’
He tossed the remote control to her, and walked out into the back garden. It was a small, barren piece of land, all fiat lawn and patio. A four-foot-high wooden fence was the boundary.
The evening sky was cloudy. Rain looked likely, but it was warmer than it had been.
His head hurt. His whole body ached dully.
Someone touched his shoulder. ‘Hi,’ his wife said. ‘You OK?’ ‘After a fashion,’ he said.
‘ Still smarting?’
‘ In more ways than one.’
‘ She’s probably right, you know — keeping you off the job.’
‘ Look, Kate, I should be on that investigation! I should be tracking that bastard down. I deserve to be. I saw those kids drowning… Jesus… I’d like to get my hands on him.’
‘ Which is exactly why you shouldn’t be on the enquiry.’ She sighed and laid a hand on his arm. ‘Why don’t you take a few days off sick? Have a long weekend — be at home with the kids for a change. And me. They’d understand at work.’
‘ No.’ He shook his head. ‘I’ve got a drugs dealer to catch.’
4a.m. Henry sat shivering in his front lounge as the semi-light of early morning filtered through the curtains. His teeth were chattering unstoppably. Yet he knew it was warm — the central heating was on full blast. But he was cold and clammy. He felt weak. He swallowed something back in his throat. It tasted of petrol.
The bottle of brandy found its way back to his mouth. The liquid gurgled down his gullet as though he were swigging back a pint of milk.
He only stopped when he began to choke.
Still he shivered. His whole body shook, convulsed.
Still he couldn’t erase the vivid nightmare which had thrown him violently awake. Faces. Fingers. Clawing. Water.
The brandy went to his mouth again. Empty. He let the bottle slip out of his fingers onto the carpet and reached for the Bell’s. The whisky went down neat on top of the brandy. Almost three quarters of a bottle.
The room began a slow, sickening spin. Moving up, moving down, all in one flowing, churning motion. The petrol taste flooded back. He gulped it down again.
He slumped sideways on the sofa, breathing heavily, mind reeling like a roller-coaster, everything going round and round, him in the middle of it, unable to act, unable to stop it all and get off; drunk, shivering… then suddenly it all became ten times worse.
The dream surged relentlessly back. Those frightened faces, pressed against the glass. The rushing river. His failure. The muted screams. His failure.
Blackness came with a piercing, wailing sound and a bang-bang banging from somewhere inside him.
The last blurred image he had before passing out was that of his eldest daughter standing by the door in her night clothes, a terrified expression on her uncomprehending face.
Chapter Seven
Joe Kovaks found the faxes from England wedged halfway down the pile in his pigeon hole. Drinking bitter black coffee from a plastic cup and grimacing with each mouthful, he looked at the photos. They were not brilliant reproductions but were clear enough to make an I.D. The prospect of sifting through thousands of photographs of Corelli and his cronies wasn’t remotely appealing.
He was about to fetch Corelli’s file when another fax was slapped down on his desk. It was the set of dabs lifted from the Posthouse Hotel room in Lancaster.
Kovaks scribbled a note marked Urgent and pinned it to the fax. He hurried down to the Fingerprint Bureau.
The atmosphere here was quiet and scholarly. Rows of computers, all logged into Printrak, filled the room. At each desk sat a fingerprint expert, dressed in shirt, tie, slacks and spectacles, the uniform of every fingerprint expert the world over, including the women. No one was smoking, so Kovaks took a final drag of his Marlboro and stamped it out on the corridor floor before crossing the threshold.
As he entered the room he wondered why anyone in their right mind would want to do this for a living.
He made his way over to a man peering at a magnified fingerprint on his computer screen. Blown up, it looked like the relief map of a mountain.
‘ Hi, Damian.’
The man spun round and squinted myopically at Kovaks. ‘Joe, for heaven’s sake, don’t do that.’
‘ Oh, did I disturb you?’
‘ I was lost in a dreamworld of loops and whorls.’
‘ Sounds like a computer game.’
‘ But much more exciting,’ Damian said. ‘What can I do for you, Agent Kovaks?’
‘ Need a favour. It’s urgent.’
‘ Always is with you. I suppose you want me to drop everything else and do your bidding. ‘
‘ Absolutely.’
He sighed good-naturedly. ‘What the heck.’
‘ Thanks, Damian.’ Kovaks gave him the fax.
Back in the office, Kovaks was surprised to see his partner from the previous night. Today she smelled quite sweet, but Kovaks noted the damp patches already beginning to form in her armpits.
‘ Hi, Sue,’ he said amicably.
‘ I phoned Chrissy. She said you’d come in early, so here I am too.’
Kovaks groaned inwardly. This would mean trouble at home. Although he’d described his temporary partner to Chrissy, she’d had a look in her eyes which said, ‘I don’t believe you.’ She was convinced Kovaks was working with a curvy blonde bombshell who was a weapons expert, karate black belt and had the sexual appetite of Pussy Galore. And now she’d heard her on the phone for the first time, which would only confirm her suspicions — on the phone Sue Mather sounded like a bimbo.
‘ I’m just doing something for Karl,’ he explained. ‘He phoned me from England.’
‘ Can I help?’
A flash of inspiration.
‘ Yeah, you can actually. I need to check Corelli’s file but I’ve got to go and see the SAC. Do you mind?’ He handed her the faxes and explained the task. ‘Long-winded, I know. But very important.’
‘ Sure, Joe, anything.’ She blinked clumsily at him in an attempt to flutter her eyelashes, but thank Christ she didn’t pass wind.
He left her to it.
Two hours later Kovaks found Sue sitting at his desk drinking coffee and eating a doughnut. Eight cigarette stubs were in the ashtray, and another smouldered on the edge of the desk, threatening the woodwork.
She looked up, and waved. Kovaks stormed across the office.
‘ I asked you to do a job for me,’ he hissed. ‘Not sit there filling your fat face.’ The words tumbled out spontaneously and he regretted them almost immediately.
Her good humour visibly evaporated. She had the look of a puppy kicked by its master for no reason other than bad temper.
Kovaks took a deep breath. ‘Look, I’m sorry,’ he said quickly.
Totally inadequate. ‘I didn’t mean what I said.’
‘ Yes, you did,’ she said petulantly. ‘I may be fat but I don’t need reminding of it.’